Consequences
by windtear
Summary: Hinata survived her battle with Pein, so what does Naruto think now?


Consequences

by windtear

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'Naruto' is copyright Masashi Kishimoto, Shueisha, Studio Perriot and Viz Media and all rights remain theirs. This is a not-for-profit fanfic.

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_There_ she was!

Naruto jumped down from the streetlight pole and began to vault over various obstacles - trees, carts, pedestrians - on his way to his goal. He was almost there, just opening his mouth to say her name, get those bright eyes focused on him, when Neji (damnit Neji, he knew his cousin, knew they had to have this conversation) called her name and pulled her off to the Hyuuga Compound, to do some... Hyuuga stuff, gah, _he_ didn't know!

Of course, what he'd say to Hinata when he _did_ talk with her, he didn't know. 'Thank you', of course, and 'I didn't know', and 'I'm sorry', but beyond that... what did you say to a person who had told you they loved you and then almost died? Selfish, yes, she had been, because how could he have ever gotten over it if she had died, without resolution? She would probably have thought it okay, as long as he lived. She would have been the only one.

But Hinata _had_ lived, and now he knew that there was someone in the world who _loved_ him. Him, Uzumaki Naruto, the Dead Last, the Kyubi Jinchuuriki, the crazy one with the perverted teachers. It was just this side of absolutely surreal. It was completely inexplicable. It warranted further investigation.

It wasn't _stalking_, Naruto assured himself virtuously. It was... investigating. Yeah, investigating. He was finding out about his quiet, sweet, dark, pretty, courageous, weird (she loved him, she was weird. She _loved_ him, with those light-tinted eyes that actually _weren't_ quite the Hyuuga standard, now he thought about it, and he liked them a lot more than the standard Hyuuga eyes, and dammit _focus_ Naruto) comrade. He clearly didn't know enough about her, and he'd have to fix that.

He created a shadow clone that nodded at him and then grinned goofily as he henged into a butterfly and fluttered over the thin picket-fence-slash-wall of the Hyuuga compound, towards the centre of Naruto's attention, whilst the original frowned petulantly at the sky and cursed the fact that he couldn't abandon all his duties to shadow clones, and so couldn't watch Hinata himself.

Five minutes later, Naruto got the memories of the butterfly-clone. He'd found Hinata on her way to a meeting with the Hyuuga Clan leaders, and perched on her hair, only to be swatted off and squashed by her dad when he'd seen her.

But the clone had discovered that her hair was soft and warm and smelled enticingly of late spring flowers, so it hadn't been a total waste. Naruto filed that information away and called it a clone well spent, and settled down to watch the Hyuuga gate, waiting for his prey- _friend_, to come out. He could wait. He had shadow clones to look after everything else, after all.

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Kakashi stared after the departing Hyuuga Hiashi, wishing yet again that Sensei had lived, that he had somebody to confide in, that Godaime-sama were conscious, that Naruto had something even vaguely resembling _common sense_...

Honestly, this entire situation was like some of the foreplay bits of Icha Icha. He'd been warned that something like this might happen, and he knew well that Sandaime-sama had been counting on the fact that orphans and neglected children often latch onto people who offer them honest care to bind Naruto to Kakashi, and thereby Konohagakure. And being the one in charge (for the nominal value thereof that either Naruto or Sasuke would allow) of two of the most isolated orphans of Konohagakure meant he'd been expecting it of one or both of them.

But neither kid had shown any signs of it and Kakashi had hoped - prayed - that Naruto's semi-normal relationships with the Ichiraku family, Umino-sensei and himself had meant that the kid had dodged the kunai. No such luck; apparently he'd just been saving it all up for the _lucky_ girl who declared herself first, and so now was going full stalker mode on Hyuuga Hinata.

Damn teenage hormones! But he probably should have expected something like this once puberty finally hit the kid. Minato-sensei had quietly, calmly and ruthlessly stalked Kushina-neesan for years until he finally got into a position where he could overwhelm her reservations (although Sensei would probably object to that description and make him amend it to 'persistently observed' and 'deeply impress' instead. But stalking was stalking and apparently genetic. Of all the things to inherit...)

Hiashi had a point. Naruto couldn't be allowed to keep doing this, and it had to be stopped before it could escalate. A butterfly on her hair one day could be a clone in her bedroom the next, and while Hinata might not object too much to that, there was a world of difference between 'happily invited' and 'sneaked in unannounced'. But how the hell do you stop the world's most Surprising Knucklehead Ninja when he's happily charging down the path to a head-on collision with the Hyuuga Family Sword?

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The next day Kakashi found out the answer: you distract him. Naruto was so surprised and angry with Danzo's plan to claim the role of Rokudaime that he'd rushed off to crash the Five Kage Summit with barely a scrap of preparation - and leaving behind no shadow clones.

So maybe it wasn't as bad as it could have been. If Naruto had been as all-out obsessed as Minato-sensei had been over Kushina-neesan, there was no way he'd have gone without at least a backup way of guarding Hinata. Maybe the kid had a chance at a normal life and normal love after all.

Nobody, not even Hinata, noticed the Hirashin seal drawn faintly on the collar of her chuunin vest.

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**Author's** **notes**:

This is a drabble meant to explore, within canon, one of the possible consequences that Hinata's confession during the battle with Pein might have had on Naruto. NaruHina fandom likes to play with the idea that Hinata's confession and the fact that he so easily accessed six tails of the Kyuubi's chakra after her near-death prompted Naruto to more deeply examine his feelings about her. I like this idea, but hey, this is _Naruto_ we're talking about.

Attachment disorders are extremely common in neglected and maltreated children. It should be noted that the behaviours of Naruto's five primary caregivers during the first part of Naruto (treating him as his correct age, giving him positive attention, boundaries and discipline) are actually the behaviours recommended by psychologists to help these children learn to develop healthy emotional attachments.

I know the ending is abrupt; I was trying to stay within canon as much as possible, and rereading the manga shows that the Five Kage Summit Arc starts pretty much as soon as Naruto gets up from his bed after the end of the battle with Pein. There isn't really room to stretch the time so that Naruto can interact with everybody, because he dashes off to stop Danzo as soon as he finds out, which means he has to assume he has enough time to catch up, and Danzo set off while he (Naruto) was unconscious, and Naruto is self-confident but not insanely so. Two, maybe three days is the maximum it can go, really. Longer than that and we start diverging from canon, and this was an active attempt not to do that.

Thank you very much for reading, especially the TL;DR at the end. Please review, I would appreciate your comments.


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